My natural hair is medium brown with some coppery highlights in the summer (with some white- yes, snow white! hair), and I had hoped to bring my hair to be something redder using the henna, but it looks too orangey to me. What is the best hopes for me acheiveing a richer redder color: leaving henna in longer, or mixing with indigo, or doing henna first, then indigo? I don't mind getting a darker shade with indigo, i actually prefer deep reds and burgundy colors, so long as I can stay away from the ghastly orange look.

Give it a week before you decide if you like the color. The orange will continue to settle out of it for a while while it oxidizes. If you're still not happy, then try a strand test with a little bit of indigo and see how you feel about that.

Yes, give it some time to oxidize. The other problem with Jamila is that you really don't know what the lawsone content might be unless the person selling it has sent it in for lab testing. Some henna from Jamila has great dye content and some has very poor dye content. Its an agricultural product so variation is inevitable ....

As the previous posters said, give it some time. The weird orange glow mellows as time goes. Mixes with lemon continue to darken for a long while, so perhaps your OJ mix will take a few extra days to settle into its final color. But say you still hate the color in 1-2 weeks...here are some options to consider for your next strand or hairball tests:

reapply the same kind of henna you used this time--as you layer one henna over another, the color deepens. It'll eventually reach the saturation point, which is a deep burgundy red

OR try a very high dye-content henna (Celebration or Purity, for example), leaving it on 4-5 hours

OR try a mix of 90% henna and 10% indigo in a one-step process (hendigo), which has been reported to darken the shade of red without "browning" it much

Thank you guys. The strand test did start to mature into something interesting, so I just said, hey, take a chance! And I mixed up a batch, let it sit twelve hours, left it on six hours and when I took it off...